Ramblings....Some Hopeful, Some Grumpy

• After much discussion with a few friends and thinking through this myself, I decided that since I've been incredibly open and honest about this experience with the whole weight loss surgery journey, that I would share my weight loss goals with y'all.
• I have been reading The Success Habits of Weight-Loss Surgery Patients and the first section of the book is all about goal-setting.  So a while back I wrote down benchmarks in that I'm hoping to reach and in a brave move...I'm posting them here.
• I need to lose a total of 135 lbs! To that end I need to:
  
• Lose 9 lbs by march 1st
• Lose 25 lbs by April 15th
• Lose 50 lbs by July 4th
• Lose 75 lbs by Sept 5th
• Lose 100 lbs by Nov. 11th
• Lose 125 lbs by Jan 16th
• Lose 135 lbs by Feb. 28th
• And one other non-scale goal is to climb to the 3rd floor without getting winded by May 1st.
• Now, I recognize these are pretty lofty goals, but they are not unreasonable or unattainable.  It will just require hard work.  So, Let the Games Begin!
• At last weigh in, I am down 76 lbs, which means that I only have 4 more lbs to go to make the March 1st goal.  SWEET!
• In other news, I went to Kearney yesterday to see my friend Dawn and my friend Amy (and her totally awesome kids).  It was a good time and I should make it out there more often, considering its only 1.5 hours away
• I've decided that I'm ridiculously cynical, jaded, and maybe just realistic about the state of democracy in our state (NE) and country (USA).
• I get annoyed when the legislators in the "Great State of NE" start using ridiculously over-dramatic rhetoric like "to protect the sanctity of the second house (or voters rights)" or "we need to protect our old people from those thugs with pens (referring to petitioners)". Get real! Most Nebraskans can't even tell you what the second house is in Nebraska. Thank goodness you protected its sanctity.
  
• I like it better when law-makers say stuff like "The AARP is for this legislation. There's a lot of people in the AARP...that means there are a lot of voters in the AARP.  So I'm going to have to support the AARP and support this legislation."  It may represent horrible motivation, but at least he's honest!
• Again, I think I will join the majority of citizens and just stop tracking politics all together.  They seem much happier than me and my friends who track what's going on in the world.
• My lips are dry....I don't think I'm drinking enough water.  I should "correct" that.  What, no Shining fans out there?
• Ryan Onstad and I saw two movies this weekend. We saw Definitely, Maybe and The Assassination of Jesse James.
• Ryan really liked Definitely, Maybe....I was just indifferent.  I loved Abigail Breslin ( I always do), but frankly the character development was so poor, I could care less what happened to anyone, so I didn't care about the outcome.  It wasn't bad, just not moving.  Over all I was kind of bored.
• But nothing prepared Ryan and I for how horrid the Assassination of Jesse James was going to be (except for Kelsey, who tried to tell me it was horrible).  It was horrible. Ryan decided it was sort of like an Iron Man competition, to see which of us could actually keep our eyes open through that snore-fest.  It was horrid, and really a disappointment considering Casey Affleck's stellar work in Gone Baby Gone.  I think it was just a really poor screen play.